The Good Luck Girls

In the country of Arketta, young, desperate girls are sold by families that cannot afford them into halfway houses that promise comfort and delight--then raise them like lambs to the slaughter.

When Clementine and her older sister, Aster, were sold as Good Luck Girls to the Green Creek "welcome house," they were marked with a "favor": a cursed flower tattoo designed to blossom on their 16th birthday. The blossoming marks their "Lucky Night," when girls are deemed ready to entertain "brags" (male guests). Aster, whose Lucky Night was "a little over a year ago," has been working as a "sundown girl" and dreading the day when Clementine has to "become a woman." Aster doesn't feel like a woman--she feels like "a shade with bile for blood and a well of shame in her heart." But Clementine is excited to turn 16 and enter into the apparently luxurious world of the sundown girls. The illusions she has are crushed on her Lucky Night, when her first brag, a surly and violent man, makes it all too clear what is expected of a sundown girl; Clementine kills him in self-defense. In an attempt to save her sister's life from the death sentence she will face, Aster enlists a group of housemates to plan an escape. The Good Luck Girls go on a quest to rid themselves of their favors--thus gaining their freedom--and find justice (and revenge) along the way.

Charlotte Nicole Davis's engrossing debut, The Good Luck Girls, depicts an exhilarating journey that tackles dark issues. Set in a singular fantasy world, this novel offers commentaries on disparities of class and gender, as well as power structures, as it tells a story of strength, overcoming adversity and the power of sisterhood. --Tasneem Daud, blogger and booktuber, Nemo Reads

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